


Old Clichés In Reverse

by orphan_account



Category: Valentine's Day (2010)
Genre: I explain why in the notes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 10:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15313122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Holden knew chasing a girl to the airport was the typical, tired cliché. But his own story seemed to go in the way of running from the airport and back home to the man he left.





	Old Clichés In Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, look, I've only seen this movie once like, 7 years ago and I saw it for Taylor Swift. But ya girl has gotten new passion for how the gays were treated after rewatching those scenes, and as I gay I feel like I should give them more closure than they got in the actual movie.

Sean always told Holden he was ‘too good of a person’. Like when Sean had given him tickets for the Super Bowl but gave it up for his visiting uncle and cousin. Or like when he took on twice as much work as needed because a coworker was too sick to work, despite the fact he didn’t have to. Or like when he cancelled their fourth anniversary date because he had to fly to Canada to allow who should’ve gone to stay with their dying mother. Or like right now, when he let the solider take his car to go home. 

Or how he put up with Sean and his refusal to come out.

Holden knew he was the bad guy in the situation. He never tried to make Sean feel bad about being closeted. He understood why he wasn’t out. It was just that at the age of thirty-five he didn’t want to lie when people asked if he was in a relationship. He had to always shrug and say he hadn’t found a man that he really liked. He’d been doing that since college, when Sean started to make a name for himself in college football and panicked over the idea of people knowing that he came home to another man. It was easier back then for Holden, he wasn’t out to anyone but Sean and their friends. Same went for Sean. They had their safe bubble but that got more fragile the older they got, the more recognition Sean got in football. Sean became more and more stiff over the idea of coming out publicly. He didn’t have many people, his mom died when he was nineteen and his dad left when he was two. Holden was the only thing that stopped football from becoming his entire life. Holden kept him grounded. 

But for the longest time, it’d felt Holden was the only one putting in the work. He wanted a family, hell he wanted marriage even though they couldn’t have it. But he wanted that commitment. He wanted the assurance that they’d be okay, even without Sean being out. 

The charity ball was what changed it. Sean had a plus one, and Sean was sure that if he came as his plus one people would put the pieces together. Why else would Sean Jackson go with a man to a charity ball? The press would be on his tail for days, maybe even weeks of months. 

That was when Holden walked out. He took everything but his toothbrush and booked a hotel, trying his hardest to not look back. Sean did call for him, he didn’t run after him. Maybe they knew it was coming. Maybe they were both ready to accept it. He hadn’t texted or called him at all on his business trip, he knew he was going after all. It was weird to go to bed and to wake up without the familiar texts. 

He distracted himself as best he could with his work, but his business partners, and even people he didn’t know that worked at the company, could tell something was wrong. He wasn’t good at hiding his emotions, that’s another thing Sean would always tell him. No one asked why he was so upset though, and he wasn’t willing to share. He didn’t open up to people, at least anyone but Sean. He couldn’t even tell the solider he wasn’t interested in the flight attendant because he was gay. 

Maybe he and Sean could’ve worked things out if he wasn’t so closed off. If he’d just told him that it was hard instead of it blowing up all at once, he wouldn’t have left and had a chance to control his emotions. But that didn’t happen and unless some miracle happened, they were staying broken up. 

When he walked into the atrium, he was waiting until he could call a cab to take him back to the hotel he’d been staying at, and maybe he should start finding a new apartment. There was a TV on the wall that he distracted himself with while he waited. The news wasn’t ever necessarily interesting but it kept him at least a little distracted. It made the wait bearable. 

It was a good distraction at least until Sean’s face came on screen. 

He’d been doing a good job of avoiding his face. Despite it being definitely over, he hadn’t gotten the nerve to delete all picture of him from his phone. Part of him wanted to avoid his face, the other part wanted to keep something of him. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to avoid Sean’s performance on the field. Sean was a pretty emotional person, as much as he tried to hide it. If their breakup had affected his ability to play, he wouldn’t be surprised. Or maybe he just had too much hope. 

His eyes didn’t leave the TV. It seemed to be replaying a live press conference he did that day. He looked nervous. It wouldn’t be obvious to most people but Holden was good at reading him. His eyes followed the subtitles, since the sound was drowned out by the sounds of the airport. 

He was talking about how he didn’t have a family, and how football made it hard for him. Holden didn’t think much of it but when he saw the words ‘who I am’ Holden couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. 

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Sean had told him coming out was almost impossible for him as a football player. He’d told him that for over ten years. 

But he watched the subtitles, much like everyone else who wasn’t in a rush and seemed to be playing close attention to the TV. And as he, barely, expected, those words appeared on the screen. 

I’m gay.

He held his composure as he said it. Like it was nothing, like he hadn’t been keeping it inside of him for so long. Like there weren’t people on the other side of the screen judging him, which Holden could see from the corner of his eye. The looks and the remarks Sean had feared would come about him came, but Holden shut it out.

He needed flowers and a different destination plan.

…

It was late when he got to the apartment building.

The cab driver made a remark about him visiting his ‘special lady’, which Holden let roll off his back. He just smiled at the thought of seeing Sean again. 

Holden still had his key, mostly because he was waiting for Sean to ask for it back. Maybe he hadn’t asked in hopes he’d come back.

Sean was sleeping on one on the chairs in the living room. He was a light sleeper, so he knew it wouldn’t take much to wake him up. He crossed the room, and walked to his side. He couldn’t help but smile when he looked down at him, and brushed the flowers against his face. When Sean slowly woke up, Holden bent down and couldn’t stop himself from stroking his hair. 

Sean met his eye and his look of disbelief crossed his face, and Holden couldn’t stop smiling at him. This intimacy was something he missed. It hadn’t even been that long but Sean was his someone. Holden was the lucky man to have him. Internet forums would speculate on Sean’s partner, would lust after him. For Holden, he never stopped being the twenty year old who skipped class to surprise him for his birthday and took him to New York to spend the day together. 

“You saw,” Sean said, because they both knew there would be no other reason he’d be back. 

“Yeah,” he said, still stroking his head. 

Sean still stared up at him and bit his lip. “You didn’t have to come back,” he said. “I did it because I was tired of hiding.”

“Were you going to call me?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

He shrugged. “I guess I wanted to keep that up to you, was expecting you’d make some other lucky guy happy.”

Sean Jackson, renowned football player and nothing but still his soft partner, lover, boyfriend. Whatever word felt right at whatever moment. If the end of them was no longer where they were, and instead was them pressing pause and they could go back to how things were before. Or for them to evolve to a more out relationship. Whatever Sean was most comfortable with. He still didn’t really know how he was handling it. 

He moved his hand from the back of his head to his cheekbone, and his thumb gently stroked it. “I love you,” he said. “That never changed. And I’m proud of you, for being able to come out.”

He gave him a small smile. “Yeah, it was big,” he said. “I just sprung it up on everyone,” he laughed. “Not even Kara and Paula knew.”

Holden laughed too. That was just like Sean, He could be dramatic when he wanted to be. He had to do things at the most. It was a reason he loved him. He wouldn’t do a simple interview in Sports Illustrated, or letting his publicist and agent at the very least know. He had to go in headfirst without looking. 

“I love you too, by the way,” Sean said, and reached up to hold Holden’s jawbone in his palm. 

They smiled at each other, and Holden leant down and brushed their noses together. Then, they tiled so their lips met in a soft kiss. 

It was familiar, it was fulfilling, it was what they both had missed and had craved during their entire time apart. 

“Fuck,” he said and pulled away. Holden looked at him confused, almost worried since Sean had looked pretty panicked out of nowhere. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I threw away your tooth brush.” 

Holden stared at him for a moment, then after a beat he laughed. A tooth brush was by far the least of his worries right now. He wrapped his arms around his neck and rested their foreheads together. “Then I’ll get a new one.” 

Sean smiled back at him before they kissed again, and Holden had already decided this was the best Valentine’s Day he’d ever had.


End file.
